Page:The Great Secret.djvu/271

Rh wretches and hardly worth the burying. It all depends upon our women how well off or how ill off we men are.

Eugene, Countess de Bergamont, loved her man Anatole, therefore they were prosperous on nothing per year. She had been accustomed in her former life to waste and profusion—jewels and knicknacks, fine dresses and fragrant waters. Now she was reduced to the state of primitive woman who had to snatch from Nature the bare necessities of life with stern and hard exertion, which skinned her hands and blistered her face, yet she was happier than she had been in her days of profuseness and wanton waste, for she had Anatole to share all these privations with her, and no one else to interfere. No prosperous couple to force comparison and make her discontented. She was alone with her man, therefore they were rich and happy. The summer was a short one on Comprado Island, yet while it lasted it was beneficent and cheerful. Flowers and herbs bloomed on the hill sides and in the valleys, and they were not likely to starve.

They went so far inland, and gradually relapsed into the primitive stage of existing. The rivers provided them with fish, which they prepared, as their ancestors had done before them, by making fire from friction when their civilised matches were exhausted. They found insects and birds with their eggs to supply them with food, herbs and native vegetables and roots to supply them with what they required for a change in diet, with fresh water without stint.

Anatole's clothes and boots wore out, so did the fashionable costume of Eugene's, then they had recourse to expedients, and managed to cover themselves to keep out the cold. They watched the departure of their